


a home of ghosts

by santanico



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Trauma, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:42:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3642216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santanico/pseuds/santanico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>hawke returns to anders, and sees the things she had been denying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a home of ghosts

hawke returns late at night.

“anders,” she calls into the darkness. there’s a thud, perhaps the drop of a book, and then footsteps.

when he sees her, he stops dead, pauses and then just  _almost_  starts to smile. she wishes she had a candle she could hold up so she could smile at him and he could see.

“it’s me, alright, come on.”

“i didn’t know when you’d be back,” he says. his voice cracks right down the middle of his words. her eyes have adjusted to the darkness and moonlight makes its way through the front windows of the cottage anyway, illuminating anders’ slimming figure.

he kisses her in front of that doorway, lips soft and dry and kiss the closest to chaste they have shared since the night he expected her knife in his back, on his throat.

“hey,” she whispers, touches his shoulders. “want to go to bed, yeah?”

anders buries his face into her neck instead. his nose is cold but she doesn’t flinch, instead clinging to him as well. his body is shaking, unnerved, and hers begin to as well.

“the things,” she whispers, “the things i’ve seen…”

“tell me,” he says, mouth moving over her skin. she wants to have him closer, she wants to have him in her bed again.

instead, she simply lets out a breath. “i got to be in the fade.”

“what?” he draws back, looks at her and frowns. hawke laughs.

“the real fade. the  _real_  fade.” she grazes her fingers along his skin. “how are you?” the question is posed in such a way that the wonder in anders’ eyes dies out.

she knows he’s…in pain. it’s the kind of pain she felt when bethany passed, when carver nearly died, when leandra was found with her body mangled and when she too, quickly passed. but those pains, for hawke, had eventually all but vanished, or been replaced by some kind of hope she managed to dig up.

the pains anders had discovered never seemed to past. he complained of ache in his chest and head often, and hawke was always afraid justice - or vengeance, rather, though she never could tell - would reappear.

but then, she loved them both, did she not?

she never denied that part of anders. it was days when she accepted him, glowing skin, tears, erratic behavior and all, that anders became the most calm.

the question hangs heavy in the air and anders shakes his head. his blonde hair is starting to gray in spots now, and she tells him she likes it, even as he laughs and considers cutting it short. she likes it long, too. when she had met him, he’d occasionally worn it pinned up in a ponytail, but half of his hair would fall loose because it was too short to stay tightly bound. now he wears it long, past his shoulders, and the streaks of silver suit him, his face aged with wisdom and the miseries of a life of trappings.

“the fade?” he says, ignoring her inquiry. she sighs but lets it pass, stroking his cheek. he leans into her touch, humming.

“the real fade. with the inquisitor. she’s a mage too, you know. she reminds me of merrill, a little.”

anders snorts, though it’s lighthearted, and he’s still smiling, eyes closed as she runs the tips her fingers over his skin. hair grows over his face, kept trimmed but still there. she enjoys it, thinks the roughness suits him, when everything else is so soft.

“she’s  _kind_. and dalish. and beautiful, but…”

anders chuckles. “shall we go to bed?”

“it’s late,” she murmurs. “but…i missed you.”

he looks at her, eyes widening, and then smiles and kisses her, warmer this time, more full. it doesn’t feel sudden, instead expected as they tug at each other’s clothes, her armor too intricate for his shaking hands, him just wearing a heavy coat over a tunic and simple trousers. she loves the feeling of working her hands over strings and buttons, tugging and pulling, helping him get naked, get  _her_ naked.

“bedroom, bedroom,” she says, tugging his arm as she steps out of one of her layers of clothing. anders is still smiling, a ghost in their hallway, and she drags him to the shared bedroom. he follows like he always has, rarely doubting her, knowing she can lead. they collapse onto the bed, hawke on top of him, kissing and biting and tugging, pulling, grabbing.

he sprawls out under her, arms stretched to the heaboard, and she smiles as she hooks her fingers in the belt loops of his trousers and tugs them down his thighs. anders lifts his hips just enough off the mattress so that she can pull harder, and sighs when he lays naked under her.

“it isn’t fair, you’re still half-clothed.”

“oh, don’t rush things,” she whispers, and wraps her fingers around his cock. he hardens in her grip and hawke licks her lips.

she had been ready to die, in the fade. ready to throw herself into a lair of demons and spiders and other horrors because it was her fault that corypheus wasn’t dead.

contemplating, she’s grateful the inquisitor had said “ _stroud_ …”

she’s hungry now, and aching between her legs, pounding in her head and growling in her chest. she wants him, anders, she wants him more than -

“ _please_ ,” he grunts, rolling his hips so that his cock slides between her deft fingers – she lets go of him and watches as he leaks onto his stomach, muscles there spread taut. anders is panting, arms still stretched over his head and hands gripping the wooden headboard. she tugs off her own pants, tosses them on the floor, and the air in the room is frigid but she’s hot to the core, and she grabs him again, pumps her fist up and down his shaft until anders’ breathing comes hard, heavy, hot.

she shifts her hips further up his body and lines herself up with his cock. the head breeches her first - she wants this to be slow, relentless, terrifying.

the nightmare demon flashes under her closed eyes, and anders moans, distant.

she sinks down on his cock, and his hips jerk.

“oh maker,” she whispers, scraping her nails along anders’ thin chest. he is everything she wants when he is inside her, but images _flash flash flash_ , memories drown out the coiling pleasure in the pit of her stomach. there are demons, and there are voices. the deep one, reminding her,  _everyone is dead, anders will die and it will be all your fault, little hawke_.

anders moves one hand from his grip on the headboard and grasps one of her breasts. his hands have been calloused from the moment they met - and so are hers - from wielding staffs from young ages. his thumb works her nipple, hardens it, and she focuses on that feeling, wants more, wants something she can’t describe.

he knows how to rock in time with her, and as her hips fall his rise, meeting her, thrusting inside, further, more, harder.

the voice had whispered other things in her head as she rushed through the fade with the inquisition. it had taunted her about anders being her only lover in this life, how he would be dead before she could lift a finger. when had he joined the wardens, could she remember? how many years did he have left?

panic rises as her orgasm tightens.

she begs for - something. she gasps his name, each breath a blessing, and it’s hot and heavy on her tongue. sometimes she wishes he was more aggressive, that he would slam her into a wall and fuck her senseless, until she couldn’t hold in the grief anymore. maybe the reality is that anders is stronger than she is, because he is not owned by the grief. it simply becomes part of him.

she comes first, a rare occasion, orgasm washing over her in gasps and sobs. she collapses onto his chest and anders thrusts into her as she quiver, she doesn’t count how many times, before he follows with a deep, guttural groan, fingers gripping her hair near her skull. she squeezes her cunt around his cock and he starts to soften, whispering her name and sinking into the mattress beneath.

she rolls onto her side afterwards, clinging to his sweat-slick skin. now, the room seems impossibly warm, almost choking her with its heat.

anders kisses her forehead, draws his thumb over the streaks where tears have stained her cheeks. “are you…alright?”

“no,” she whispers. what’s stopping her from telling the truth? why keep a lie, as if any of it is sacred? “it was horrifying.”

“i - i’m sorry…”

“the fade, i mean.” she swallows back humiliation. forces herself to trust anders, in this moment, to not feel emasculated or worried that she is so focused on this trauma. she focuses and looks at him, sees the confusion, mingled with hurt and worry. “i couldn’t get those…those things, out of my head. it’s horrifying. there were moments i wanted to dream, i wanted to - i didn’t want to wake up. i kept falling over when the nightmare demon…it called to me. it promised me  _you_.”

anders fingers tighten in her hair, warm and  _there_ , belonging. he kisses her, open mouthed, tongue on her lips. she moans. he could distract her for hours, if either of them had the energy anymore. she smiles as she remembers the first few nights they had spent together, back before everything went to shit. up all hours, tumbling on her bed, her floor, her desk. 

“if you tell me, perhaps that will help…” he murmurs. hawke isn’t sure she believes him; it seems an ugly lie, this life sometimes, but she trails her fingers over his collar bone and down his chest, considering the offer. “you don’t have to. know that – you never have to. do _anything_. ever.”

“you offer me a world i don’t deserve,” she whispers, kissing his shoulder. she pauses for a moment, then says, “it was literally a nightmare. promising us all the things we feared over anything.” she allows herself to focus on the soft sound of anders’ own breathing, his chest rising and falling with each deep inhale. she smiles, presses her mouth to his throat. he is warm, smells of sweat and salt and something beautiful, something distinctly anders.

“go on." 

“we had to fight it, the demon. kill it. i watched the inquisitor, her friends…” hawke trails off. “but sometimes, things went…black. when the inquisitor told me, i was shocked. i had been – unable to move, unable to help. the thing knocked me out. and it spoke to me. it used me. hoped i would turn on them. because it knew i wanted you. that i was – afraid.” 

“was it corypheus’ doing?”

“i…i don’t know. it doesn’t matter, does it?” she looks at him, strokes a finger over his skin. he shivers and she smiles. “i don’t know. i just don’t know. it terrified me. i’m glad to be alive. it makes me realize…what i missed. truly.”

anders kisses her again this time, and she rolls on top of him. it’s intimacy, nothing to be said about it. it isn’t passion, necessarily, not in the way it was before. it is – what hawke had always wanted, something she had needed without knowing. it is _warm_.

“anders, they are looking for a cure.”

“a cure?” he mutters, ghosting his fingers through her hair and pressing his lips to her forehead. she touches her nose to his and gets closer, kissing his mouth. “a cure for _what_ , say you?”

“the calling. maybe wardens don’t have to go out in a glorious fire, after all.”

anders looks at her, his eyes betraying little. “you shouldn’t say such things,” he whispers.

“i don’t mean to…upset you,” hawke says, cupping his face in her hands. “it’s selfish of me to hope for such a thing, i know. i don’t want you to disappear. i don’t want to lose you to the deep roads.”

“you won’t lose me to that, i promise.”

“you wouldn’t go?”

“why should i? the grey wardens did little for me.”

hawke shakes her head. “you won’t be happy with what i know of them now. at least, some of them.”

anders shrugs under her and she curls up closer to his chest. “grey wardens, the circle…all ways to remind me i will only be used when i am necessary.” he shifts, puts his arms around hawke, and rests.

she has nightmares that night, bright and horrific, but he is there when she wakes, and he kisses such fears away.

the trauma will not subside – but it will be survivable.


End file.
